Child Sense: Dealing with frustrations by the senses

Posted in Mom Stuff
by Lorain County Moms

McClatchy-Tribune

I had nine people due to arrive for dinner in 20 minutes, and after carefully planning the meal, I had what I was convinced to be the perfect dish. The trouble was that I was not paying attention to the time and I had just burned the food — badly.

As I looked at the meal going down the food disposal, I felt like throwing a tantrum. And while I had learned at this point in my adulthood not to scream and stamp my feet, I still felt a great need to whine to my son. I’m auditory, so my frustration is released through verbal means, but my son is tactile so he generally needs to throw, push or run off his frustration.

He was not pleased that I’d asked him to clean his room, so he’d scooped up a pile of his clothes and was dramatically throwing them all into my room. It was such a funny moment, with me complaining and him throwing clothes, that when our eyes locked, we both just burst out laughing and I realized right at that moment how much we reveal about our dominant sense during moments of frustration.

What’s great about being a parent that is aware of the dominant senses is that we all have the ability to know how to divert not only our child’s tantrums, but also our own. Diversion is always a great tactic in dealing with frustration because it not only gives a break from what happened, but it also gives us an opportunity to divert from a negative reaction to a positive one.

For example, I had the mother of a boy come to me because her son and his friend used to get into full fist fights at their after-preschool pick up. When we looked at the senses of these boys, they were both tactile. It turned out that the overwhelmed excitement of seeing their moms, being “finally set free” from school, and also being indoors and close together all day was too much for both of them to process. So they reacted to their frustration true to their tactile sense: physically.

It was a situation that was not to be changed easily, but the boys needed to learn how to deal with it. So we used the sensory diverting method to handle this issue. Both boys needed a physical outlet, so I gave them one that met both mothers’ approval. The minute the moms saw the boys, they hugged them quickly then said “who can run to the back wall the fastest?” Both boys would then take off as fast as they could and return after exerting a physical release, now calm and ready to go home.

This type of diversion can be used for dealing with frustrations of children of each dominant sense, not just children who were tactile like the two fighting preschool friends. For visual children, they will need any visual diversion — perhaps something as simple as saying a quick, “look over there!” For auditory children, pop in a CD of their favorite songs or burst into song when they get agitated.

With taste and smell children, start a conversation about something unrelated and include someone they admire in the story, i.e. “Guess what happened to grandma this morning!” This type of problem solving teaches your child how to manage their frustration in a positive way. And more importantly, it keeps lines of communication open between parent and child during moments of frustration, but with the added bonus of avoiding a full blown tantrum or meltdown … by you or your child!

Priscilla J. Dunstan is a child and parenting behavior expert and consultant and the author of Child Sense. Learn more about Priscilla and her parenting discoveries at www.childsense.com.